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Multipurpose legumes II

Project Details

Summary

Project Title:

Multipurpose Legumes and Management Strategies for Reinvigorating and Maintaining the Health and Productivity of Smallholder Mixed Farming Systems

Overview:

This is a participatory, systems-oriented and collaborative research project that aims at improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in western Kenya through integration of promising multipurpose grain legumes into the farming system. The project is led by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) in collaboration with Cornell University (USA), University of Nairobi (Kenya), Egerton University (Kenya), Appropriate Rural Development Agriculture Program – ARDAP and Rural Energy and Food Security Organization - REFSO (NGOs), and AVENE Community Development Organization (a CBO). The project is working with groups of smallholder farmers in Nandi, Vihiga and Busia Counties in western Kenya to develop, refine and scale-out promising legume options for improving the productivity of the systems.

High population pressure on land has led to farm fragmentation in western Kenya, resulting in continuous cropping in an attempt to ensure household food security. This has resulted in soil fertility degradation and a decline in productivity. The western Kenya smallholder systems are extremely variable with respect to rainfall, temperature, soil fertility, prevalence of pests and diseases, land and labor scarcity, income, market and preferences. These factors must be taken into account in the formulation of appropriate production options. Therefore, options available for enhancing productivity must be applied in context. In other words, options must be matched to contexts. This requires comprehensive site characterization to establish the contexts in which to apply the options. In order to describe the contexts for the application of the various legume production enhancing options, a GIS-based site characterization is necessary.

Grain legumes have the potential to improve the productivity of smallholder systems. The project’s strategy involves the incorporation of multipurpose grain legumes into the system to rejuvenate the system health and improve productivity. Agro-Ecological Intensification (AEI) refers to improving the performance of Agriculture through integration of ecological principles into farming system management. The project has adopted the AEI approach and matching of options to contexts to facilitate the improvement of the ecosystem and realize multiple benefits of multipurpose grain legumes. Some of the key AEI principles being addressed by the project include environmental resilience, use of local resources, facilitation of production under resource limitation, use of local and global knowledge, and functional diversity.

Project Aims:

Introduction of a wide range of legume species and varieties is intended to:

Increased livestock productivity through provision of high fodder value legumes

Improved health and well-being of household members due to a better household food supply and nutritional security.

Approach:

Legumes have the capacity to supply nitrogen to the degraded smallholder soils through biological nitrogen fixation. Certain grain legumes, such as lablab, soybean, groundnut, etc., have the capacity to suppress striga weed thereby improving the yield of cereals. Supply of biologically fixed nitrogen and suppression of striga weed is expected to contribute to increase to environmental resilience. Smallholder farmers in Nandi produce under conditions of resource limitation. Inorganic fertilizers are expensive thus the farmers use small amounts that are insufficient to generate levels of productivity required to attain food security. Combination of organic and inorganic fertilizers is one of the options the project is promoting to enable farmers cope with resource limitation and take advantage of organic-inorganic synergy. Resource limitation can also be alleviated by use of locally available resources such as, cereal crop residues and legume biomass. The project is promoting the incorporation of legume biomass to improve soil fertility and improve productivity of cereals grown in rotation with legumes. The project is training farmers on the use of locally available materials (crop residues, legume biomass, animal dung, Tithonia diversifolia,etc) which can be used to prepare high quality compost manure. The compost manure can be fortified with rock phosphate to improve the phosphorus content.

Outputs and Outcomes:

The project is expected to contribute the following outputs and outcomes:

An understanding of the distribution patterns of legume production constraints and opportunities available for improving productivity

An understanding of the interrelationships between the physical and biological constraints to legume production and how they interact to influence system productivity

Promising legume species and varieties tolerant to pests and diseases of economic importance in western Kenya smallholder systems identified

The target smallholder production systems diversified and productivity improved

Improved ecosystem health and performance through enhanced soil fertility and striga control

John Ojiem

Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI)

Dr. John Ojiem holds a PhD in Soil Science from Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands. He is currently the Centre Director of Kibos Research Centre, one of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization’s centres situated in Kisumu, western Kenya. Dr. Ojiem is the Project’s Principal Investigator and leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers spearheading the integration of multipurpose grain legumes into western Kenya smallholder systems to reinvigorate the systems and improve system health and productivity. He has experience spanning many years working with smallholder farms, mainly on issues related to soil fertility improvement. His research has focused significantly on the contribution of legumes to the economic welfare of smallholder farmers through provision of food and fodder, increasing household income and improvements in soil fertility. Previously he was a member of the Kenya Legume Research Network and has coordinated several multi-institutional projects addressing soil improvement in Western Kenya. He has also been a principal collaborator in a number of cross-country projects implemented in association with CGIAR centres, particularly on improving integrated nutrient management practices in small-scale farms in Africa. Dr. Ojiem has authored and co-authored many scientific publications in refereed journals, including contribution to book chapters, as well as publications in conference proceedings.

Julie Lauren

Cornell University

Dr. Julie G. Lauren is a Senior Research Associate at Cornell University with over 22 years of experience in agricultural research and development in South Asia and East Africa. She is a soil scientist with extensive experience carrying out high quality, innovative research in the area of sustainable intensification with significant development impact. In Kenya her work has focused primarily on improving legume productivity to reinvigorate smallholder mixed farming systems. Dr. Lauren’s role in the McKnight CCRP is to provide technical guidance at the design and implementation stages, assist Kenyan students working on the project and assist with analysis and interpretation of results. In addition to McKnight CCRP, she has taken a lead role on 2 USAID Collaborative Research Support Programs (Soil Management, Dry Grain Pulses), and the USDA Food for Progress Program in Bangladesh.

Joyce Mutai

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology

Joyce Mutai is a holder of a BSc. Degree in Agriculture from Kenyatta University, Kenya. At the moment, she is a student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology in Kenya where she is pursuing an MSc degree in Research Methods. Joyce has been a member of the Multipurpose Legumes Project team since 2013. Her activities in the project are wide ranging.
She was the Project’s Administrative Assistant from May 2013 to May 2015. She was in charge of planning, communication and general administration of the project. She is leading the GIS-based characterization of the project sites to identify and map legume production constraints and opportunities. This guides the testing of legume options and scaling out of these options to other environments beyond the project implementation sites. Joyce has participated in a number of project surveys particularly those dealing with understanding the socio-economic circumstances of farmers. These include surveys of farmers participating in the project to understand the perceptions of the legume options they are testing and the extent to which they have adopted them and the impact on their livelihoods, and focused group discussions to understand farmers’ perceptions and to establish their knowledge on storage pests of maize and grain legumes and their control. She is currently involved in a multi-environmental study to test effectiveness of different storage pest control strategies in Western Kenya.

Anne Kivisi

University of Nairobi

Anne K. Kivisi is a holder of BSc. degree in Biotechnology from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya. Currently, she is an MSc. Crop Protection student awaiting graduation at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Under the Multipurpose Legume Project, Anne carried out a research on Bean Disease Inoculum in Soil and Seeds in Nandi County and Management of Bean Root Rot by Seed Dressing. The broad objective of Anne’s research was to establish levels of bean disease inoculum in soil and bean seeds and to reduce the adverse effects of root rot in beans by seed dressing for improved productivity and food security in Nandi County. Anne is knowledgeable in a number of statistical packages such as Ms Excel, Genstat and SPSS.

Hannington Ochieng

Maseno University

Hannington O. Ochieng is holder of a BSc. degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya. Currently, he is a MSc. student in Research Methods at Maseno University, Kenya. Hannington is the Project Technical Officer. His responsibility in the project include assisting in the design of research activities, facilitating development and implementation of appropriate data collection and management strategies, including providing training on digital data collection devices and tools, such as Open Data Kit (ODK) and Google Maps using mobile devices. Hannington brings a wealth of experience to the project, having previously worked with Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) program under SAMPLES (Standard Assessment of Mitigation Potential and Livelihoods in Smallholder Systems) project as Research Assistant, and with African Maths Initiative as a Volunteer. Hannington is knowledgeable in a number of statistical packages (including Stata, Ms Excel, R, and CSpro) and mathematical packages (Sage, python, Mathematica).

James Muthomi

University of Nairobi

James W. Muthomi is an Associate Professor of Plant Pathology in the Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Nairobi, Kenya. He has 21 years research and teaching experience at the University of Nairobi and agricultural extension with the Ministry of Agriculture. His research interests include management of mycotoxins in cereals, legume diseases and plant disease management. He has attracted research funding and successfully managed 15 research projects in the field of crop protection and plant disease management. Results of the research activities are found in 53 publications in international peer reviewed scientific journals and in over 57 papers in conference proceedings. He has supervised 39 Masters and 5 Ph.D. students to completion. He has reviewed research publications for various international journals and conferences. Prof. Muthomi has been in the McKnight-funded Multipurpose legume Project since 2010. Within the project he contributes expertise in legume diseases and their management, in addition to capacity building through supervision of postgraduate students. The main focus of research has been management of root rot complex in beans. The research in legume diseases has supported training of four postgraduate students in the Agricultural Resource Management and Crop Protection.

James Wafula Nyongesa

University of Eldoret

James Wafula Nyongesa is a holder of a certificate in Bio-Intensive Agriculture from Manor House Agricultural College Kitale. Currently, he is a diploma student in general agriculture at University of Eldoret, Kenya. James is one of the project’s Field Technical Assistants. His responsibilities in the project include mobilization of farmers, making trial plans, trial plot layout, trial planting, and data collection and processing. James brings a wealth of experience to the project, having previously worked with Environmental Action Team (EAT) based in Kitale, western Kenya, doing soil sampling, conducting pythium seed assay and fuserium stem assay, assessing chuffer-grab population under different soil management options, and Dry Grain Pulses (CRSP) project working on smallholder farmers to test various legume management options. EAT is a non-governmental organization that deals with adaptive research and provides agricultural extension services to small holder farmers in western Kenya. Its activities include incorporation of legumes into smallholder farming systems, managing pest and diseases in legumes and devising strategies for integrated soil fertility management. CRSP on grain legumes was a USIAD funded project (2008 – 2010) on using improved pulse crop productivity to reinvigorate smallholder mixed farming systems of Nandi County, western Kenya. James has skills on digital data collection using ODK, data cleaning and preliminary analysis. Proficiency in Ms Word, excel and Power Point.

Janet Kasiti

Multi-purpose Legumes Project

Janet Kasiti, has over 20 year’s field experience in Agriculture. She studied Bio-intensive Agriculture from Manor House Agricultural College. Kasiti was then employed at the College as a Field Instructor, training students and farmers on both theory and practical aspects of Bio-intensive principles on sustainable agriculture. In the same college, she worked as Research Assistant under a newly funded extension/ outreach, adaptive research and publications development project. In 1996, she joined Environmental Action Team (EAT) as a Field Officer. Here, she implemented on-farm and on-station research activities, and facilitated farm learning during training sessions and field visits. Later in 2007, she joined Give Women Wings, a project which was initially an arm of Common Ground Program, an NGO in Kiminini – Kitale. From 2011 to date she has been working as a Field Technical Assistant in the Multi-purpose Legumes Project. Her responsibilities in the project include mobilization of farmers, making trial plans, trial plot layout, trial planting, and data collection and processing. She has skills in data collection and data entry.

Josephat Ambuga

AVENE

Josphat Ambuga is the Director of Avene Community Development Organization, a community-based organization based in Vihiga County in western Kenya. Avene operates in Vihiga and surrounding Counties in western Kenya. Currently, he is a student at the University of Eldoret studying Sustainable Agriculture. Avene is collaborating with Multipurpose Legume Project in integration of grain legumes into smallholder farming to improve system productivity. As a community-based organization with elaborate grass-root networks, Avene is involved in up scaling successful legume options and facilitating farmer research network activities among farmer groups in Vihiga County. Josephat has vast experience working with smallholder farmers to address food insecurity, having collaborated with several projects operating in western Kenya to improve smallholder productivity. These include Striga Management and Eradication Project under African Agricultural Technological Foundation (AATF), and N2 Africa, a biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) Project led by CIAT-TSBF. N2 Africa deals with promotion of legume inoculants, grain legume marketing, value addition and women empowerment. Josephat is also involved in various platforms that deals with agricultural technology evaluation in the western Kenya region.

Simon Maina Kamwana

University of Eldoret

Simon Maina Kamwana is holder of a certificate in Sustainable agriculture and rural development from Baraka Agricultural College in Kenya. Currently, he is a diploma student in general agriculture at University of Eldoret, Kenya. Simon is one of the project’s Field Technical Assistants. His responsibilities in the project include mobilization of farmers, planning for legume screening trials, plot layout, planting of trials, and data collection and processing. Simon brings a wealth of experience to the project, having previously worked with Environmental Action Team (EAT) based in Kitale, western Kenya, and Dry Grain Pulses (CRSP) project. EAT is a non-governmental organization that deals with adaptive research and provides agricultural extension services to small holder farmers in western Kenya. Its activities include incorporation of legumes into smallholder farming systems, managing pest and diseases in legumes and devising strategies for integrated soil fertility management. CRSP on grain legumes was a USIAD funded project (2008 – 2010) on using improved pulse crop productivity to reinvigorate smallholder mixed farming systems of Nandi County, western Kenya. Simon has skills on digital data collection using ODK, data cleaning and preliminary analysis. Proficiency in Ms Word, excel and Power Point.

Mercy Onyango

University of Nairobi

Mercy A. Onyango is a holder of a BSc. degree in Agriculture (Agriculture Economics major) from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Currently she is a MSc. student in a Collaborative Masters in Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Mercy is doing her MSc. thesis research under the Multipurpose Legumes Project. Her research in the project include assessing the profitability, utilization and acceptability of the multipurpose grain legume varieties being promoted for production by smallholder farmers in Nandi County, western Kenya. Mercy has considerable organizational, management, analytical and interpersonal experience, having served as a Research Assistant in several smallholder farmer surveys. Mercy has an in-depth understanding of statistical packages including excel, SPSS, STATA and GenStat.

John Huria Nderitu

University of Nairobi

Prof John Huria Nderitu Agricultural Entomologist/IPM/crop Protection /Organic Agriculture and an Associate Professor, University of Nairobi. Prof Nderitu obtained his PhD 1990 in Agricultural Entomology from the University of Dar es salaam, an MSc Agricultural Entomology in 1984 from the University of Nairobi and BEd Science (Zoology, Botany and Education). In 1978 from the University of Nairobi. Prof Nderitu is currently the Deputy Vice- Chancellor, Linkaged and Resource mobilization, Mount Kenya University, Thika, Kenya. He is a highly accomplished scientist with wide experience in the country and in the international arena.
Professor Nderitu has over 37 years’ experience having worked for many years with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute before joining the University in 1992. Prof Nderitu has published over 100 papers in refereed journals and some in Conference proceedings. He is an active researcher and has attracted substantial funding to support his research work. He has in the process supervised several 7 PhD and 70 MSc students.

Oliver Otieno Okumu

University of Nairobi

Oliver Otieno Okumu is holder of MSc in Crop Protection and BSc in Agriculture from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He is currently enrolled for his PhD in Crop protection from the same University. Oliver is the PhD student in the Multipurpose Legume Project (MLP) and is investigating the effect of lablab green manure on soil-borne pathogens and the resultant effect on bean crop germination. Oliver's project examines the effect of application of green manure on the dynamics of soil-borne pathogens. Oliver worked on Fusarium head blight disease of wheat in his MSc thesis. He graduated with MSc degree in a record time of one and a half years.

Orandi Jairus Geteri

Egerton University

Orandi Jairus Geteri is a holder of BSc Degree in Agricultural Education and Extension from Egerton University, Njoro, Kenya. In addition, he holds the final qualification of Certified Public Secretary {CPS (K)} examinable by Kenya Accountants and Secretaries National Examination Board (KASNEB). Currently, he is a MSc. student of Agronomy at Egerton University. He is pursuing his Masters Research work under the Multipurpose Legumes Project on enhancement of soil fertility. His research topic is Evaluation of Tithonia P-compost on maize (Zea mays) and lablab (Lablab purpureus) intercrop systems in Nandi County, western Kenya. Orandi is a long standing science teacher (Biology and Agriculture) venturing into the world of research. He is proficient in the use of SAS package for analysis.

Samuel Mwonga

Egerton University

Samuel Mwonga is an Associate Professor in Soil Fertility Management in the Department of Crops, Horticulture and Soils at Egerton University. He has a BSc (Agric) from McGill University (Canada), MSc in Soil Science from the University of Nairobi and a PhD from Cornell University (USA). He has a postgraduate Diploma in Agricultural Research and Development (ARD) form the International Centre for Development oriented Research in Agriculture, ICRA (Netherlands). His duties at the university include teaching, research, outreach and post-graduate student supervision in soil fertility and related fields.
Samuel has wide experience in inter-disciplinary research, training and in development of training programmes in Agricultural Research and Development. He was a longtime trainer with CMRT, a Egerton-KARI-CIMMYT project that offered crop research management to mid-level scientists from the region. His research and training interests focuses on soil fertility management in low input systems including nutrient fluxes/balance in smallholder systems. His responsibilities in the project include research and development of low cost technologies to address soil P and system health, and farmer training in technology use for increased productivity and profitability. He is involved in providing guidance in soil fertility related research by students in the project.

Pictures

South Nandi farmers are cashing in on a ready market for rabbit urine, which is sold to an Eldoret-based company that is bottling it as a potent organic liquid manure for top dressing horticultural crops. The price of rabbits in the area has more than tripled since the company started buying the urine.

Photo Credit:

Beth Medvecky

Lablab purpureus cv. Rongai is the multipurpose legume of choice among many South Nandi farmers, thanks to it's tasty grain and huge impact on subsequent maize grain yields. Here, a Kiptaruswo farmer has initiated her own research on a maize lablab intercrop. As a collaborating farmer in the Multipurpose Legume project, she's had several years experience growing lablab in rotation with maize. Since the crop has proven to be so useful to her she also wanted to assess how it could perform when intercropped with maize in the same season. She thought the performance was good.

Photo Credit:

Beth Medvecky

Bean varieties laid out for joint evaluation by a South Nandi farmers' research network. Forty-five farmers working with the Multipurpose legume project planted these varieties to determine how they performed across a soil fertility gradient during the long rains of 2015.

Photo Credit:

Beth Medvecky

Members of the Multipurpose Legumes team compete to snap the winning photo for the 2015 CCRP Eastern Africa Photo Competition.

Photo Credit:

Beth Medvecky

Caught in the act!

Photo Credit:

Beth Medvecky

Joseph Tarus, a farmer in Kiptaruswo who has been in project since 2008 narrating the progress he has made so far while participating in project activities

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Farmer showing the visiting team her preferred bean variety from the screening trial during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Joyce Mutai

Farmer showing the visiting team the grain yield performance of bean varieties from the screening trial during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Joyce Mutai

Farmer showing the visiting team the grain yield performance of bean varieties from the screening trial during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Farmer explaining to the team the importance of legumes on soil fertility improvement and income generation especially Groundnut (CG7)

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Team interacting with the farmers after viewing their farm activities

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Farmer showing the team the effect of halo blight disease (economically important disease) on lablab (Rongai) in her farm

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

The team evaluating the performance of maize in verification trials following the legumes in Kiptaruswo during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Team observing lablab bulking plot in Kiptaruswo during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Joyce Mutai

Leah Sigei, a farmer in Koibem site assessing her lablab bulking plot during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Joyce Mutai

A farmer assessing performance of different grain legumes in a farmer managed trial in Kiptaruswo, Nandi County, Kenya. The picture shows good performance of Bean KK8 (foreground), Groundnut CG7 (middle) and Soybean SB19 (background).

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

Members of a farmer legume seed bulking group weeding a bean (variety KK8) plot in Kapkerer site, Nandi County, western Kenya. This relatively large bean seed plot is a pointer to the demand and the success of the community-based seed production efforts.

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

A community-based seed bulking plot of soybean (variety SB19) in Vihiga site, Vihiga County, western Kenya

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

A farm family in Kiptaruswo site, western Kenya, cleaning and drying part of the newly harvested crop of bean KK8. Bean KK8 is one of the most popular of the newly introduced bean varieties.

Photo Credit:

Simon Kamwana

Farmers from Nandi County viewing lablab (TX24) bulking plot in Vihiga during the farmer exchange visit. TX24 is a newly introduced lablab variety being screened for halo blight tolerance

Photo Credit:

Simon Kamwana

Visiting farmers from Vihiga County viewing assorted legume plots in a varietal screening trial at Koibem site, western Kenya. Picture shows the differential performance of legume species at the site.

Photo Credit:

Simon Kamwana

Farmers showing their preferred bean varieties from the screening trial during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Esther Langat, a farmer in Koibem assessing bean performance under screening in her farm during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Simon Kamwana

Hopkins Aluda, a farmer in Kapkerer assessing pest’s damage on bean under screening in his farm during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Simon Kamwana

Leah Sigei, a farmer in Koibem site weeding lablab (Rongai)-maize intercrop trial during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

Soybean (SB19) planted in pure stand being compared with soybean-maize intercrop in Kapkerer site during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

Farmer in Kapkerer evaluating Soybean (SB19) performance in pure stand and as an intercrop with maize during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

Farmers in Kiptaruswo under a session of training on disease identification and rogueing during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

Farmers in Kiptaruswo under a session of training on seed quality management during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Simon Kamwana

Farmers in Kapkerer under a session of training on disease identification and rogueing during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Assessment of lime and inoculant on growth and performance of soybean (SB19) in Kapkerer site during the long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

James Nyongesa

Difference observed in plots where maize was planted following legumes (right) compared to plot where maize was planted with no legumes previously (left) during long rains season, 2015

Photo Credit:

Hannington Odido

Leah Sigei, a farmer in Koibem site comparing maize performance in legume-maize rotation plots during the long rains season, 2015